Tag Archives: Optical Disc

Sony has always been a company that prioritizes and implements the requests of the customer. They are constantly innovation throughout all aspects of production — from initial capture to display. At NAB 2017, Sony’s goal was to further expand benchmarks the company has made in the past few months.

To reflect its focus as a company, Sony’s NAB booth was focused on four areas: image capture, media solutions, IP Live and HDR (High Dynamic Range). Sony’s focus was to demonstrate its ability to anticipate for future demands in capture and distribution while introducing firmware updates to many of their existing products to complement these future demands.

Cameras
Since Sony provides customers and clients with a path from capture to delivery, it’s natural to start with what’s new for imaging. Having already tackled the prosumer market with its introduction of the a7sii, a7rii, FS5 and FS7ii, and firmly established its presence in the cinema camera line with the Sony F5, F55 and F65, it’s natural that Sony’s immediate steps weren’t to follow up on these models so soon, but rather introduce models that fit more specific needs and situations.

The newest Sony camera introduced at NAB was the UMC-S3CA. Sporting the extremely popular sensor from the a7sii, the UMC-S3CA is a 4K interchangeable lens E mount camera that is much smaller than its sensor sibling. Its Genlock ability allows any user to monitor, operate and sync many at a time, something extremely promising for emerging media like VR and 360 video. It boasts an incredible ISO range from 100-409,600 and recording internal 4K UHD recording at 23.98p, 25fps and 29.97p in 100Mbps and 60Mbps modes. The size of this particularly small camera is promising for those who love the a7sii but want to employ it in more specific cases, such as crash cams, drones, cranes and sliders.

To complement its current camera line, Sony has released an updated version of their electronic viewfinder DVF-EL100 —the DVF-EL200 (pictured)— which also boasts a full 1920x1080p resolution image and is about twice as bright as the previous model. Much like updated versions of Sony’s cameras, this monitor’s ergonomics are attributed to the vast input from users of the previous model, something that the company prides itself on. (Our main image show the F55 with the DVF-EL200 viewfinder.)

Just because Sony is introducing new products doesn’t mean that it has forgotten about older products, especially those that are part of its camera lines. Prosumer models, like the Sony PXW-Z150 and Sony PXW-FS5, to professional cinema cameras, such as the Sony PMW-F5 and PMW-F55, are all receiving firmware updates coming in July 2017.

The most notable firmware update of the Z150 will be its ability to capture images in HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma) to support easier HDR capture and workflow. The FS5 will also receive the ability to capture in HLG, in addition to the ability to change the native ISO from 2000 to 3200 when shooting in SLog2 or SLog3 and 120fps capabilities at 1080p full HD. While many consider the F65 to be Sony’s flagship camera, some consider the F55 to be the more industry friendly of Sony’s cinema camera line, and Sony backs that up by increasing it’s high frame rate capture in a new firmware update. This new firmware update will allow the F55 to record in 72, 75, 90, 96 and 100fps in 4K RAW and in the company’s new compressed Extended Original Camera Negative (X-OCN) format.

X-OCN
Sony’s new X-OCN codec continues to be a highlight of the company’s developments as it boasts an incredible 16-bit bit-depth despite it being compressed, and it’s virtually indistinguishable from Sony’s own RAW format. Due to its compression, it boasts file sizes that are equivalent to 50 percent less than 2K 4:3 Arriraw and 4K ProRes 4444 XQ and 30 percent less than F55 RAW. It’s considered the most optimal and suitable format for HDR content capturing. With cameras like the F5, F55 and its smaller alternatives, like the FS7 and FS7II allowing RAW recording, Sony is offering a nearly indistinguishable alternative to cut down on storage space as well as allow more recording time on set.

Speed and Storage
As Sony continues to increase its support for HDR and larger resolutions like 8K, it’s easy to consider the emergence of X-OCN as an introduction of what to expect from Sony in the future.

Despite the introduction of X-OCN being the company’s answer to large file sizes from shooting RAW, Sony still maintain a firm understanding of the need for storage and the read/write speeds that come with such innovations. As part of such innovations, Sony has introduced the AXS-AR1 AXS memory and SXS Thunderbolt card reader. Using a Thunderbolt 2 connector, which can be daisy-chained since the reader has two inputs, the reader has a theoretical transfer speed of approximately 9.6Gbps, or 1200MBps. Supporting SxS and Sony’s new AXS cards, if one were to download an hour’s worth of true 4K footage at 24fps, shot in X-OCN, it would only take about 2.5 minutes to complete the transfer.

To complement these leaps in storage space and read/write speeds, Sony’s Optical Disc Archive Generation 2 is designed as an optic disc-based storage media with expandable robotic libraries called PetaSites, which through the use of 3.3TB Optical Disc Archive Cartridges guarantee a staggering 100-year shelf life. Unlike LTOs, which are generally only used a handful of times for storing and retrieving, Sony’s optical discs can be quickly and randomly accessed as needed.

HDR
HDR continues to gain traction in the world of broadcast and cinema. From capture to monitoring, the introduction of HDR has spurred many companies to implement new ways to create, monitor, display and distribute HDR content. As mentioned earlier, Sony is implementing firmware updates in many of its cameras to allow internal HLG, or Instant HDR, capture without the need for color grading, as well as compressed X-OCN RAW recording to allow more complex HDR grading to be possible without the massive amounts of data that uncompressed RAW takes up.

HDR gamma displays can now be monitored on screens like the Sony FS5’s, as well as higher-end displays such as their BVM E171, BVM X300/2 and PVM X550.

IP Live
What stood out about Sony’s mission with HDR is to further implement its use in realtime, non-fiction content, and broadcasts like sporting events through IP Live. The goal is to offer instantaneous conversions to not only output media in 4K HDR and SDR but also offer full HD HDR and SDR at the same time. With its SR Live System Sony hopes to implement updates in their camera lines with HLG to provide instant HDR which can be processed through its HDRC-4000 converters. As the company’s business model has stated Sony’s goal is to offer full support throughout the production process, which has led to the introduction of XDCAM Air, which will be an ENG-based cloud service that addresses the growing need for speed to air. XDCAM Air will launch in June 2017.

Managing Files
To round out its production through delivery goals, Sony continues with Media Backbone Navigator X, which is designed to be an online content storage and management solution to ease the work between capture and delivery. It accepts nearly any file type and allows multiple users to easily search for keywords and even phrases spoken in videos while being able to stream in realtime speeds.

Media Backbone Navigator X is designed for productions that create an environment of constant back and forth and will eliminate any excessive deliberation when figuring out storage and distribution of materials.

Sony’s goal at NAB wasn’t to shock or awe but rather to build on an established foundation for current and new clients and customers who are readying for an ever-changing production environment. For Sony, this year’s NAB could be considered preparation for the “upcoming storm” as firmware updates roll out more support for promising formats like HDR.

Digital storage plays a significant role in the media and entertainment industry, and our specific demands are often very different from typical IT storage. We are dealing with performance requirements of realtime video in capture, editing and post, as well as distribution. On the other hand, the ever-growing archive of long-tail digital content and digitized historical analog content is swelling the demand for archives (both cold and warm) using tape, optical discs and hard drive arrays.

My company, Coughlin Associates, has conducted surveys of digital storage use by media and entertainment professionals since 2009. These results are used in our annual Digital Storage in Media and Entertainment Report. This article presents results from the 2016 survey and some material from the 222-page report to discuss the status of digital storage for professional media and entertainment.

Content Creation and Capture
Pro video cameras are undergoing rapid evolution, driven by higher-resolution content as well as multi-camera content capture, including stereoscopic and virtual reality. In addition, the physical storage media for professional cameras is undergoing rapid evolution as film and magnetic digital tape is impacted by the rapid file access convenience of hard disk drives, optical discs, and the ruggedness of flash-based solid-state storage.

The table below compares the results from the 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 surveys with those from 2016. Flash memory is the clear leader in pro video camera media, increasing from 19% in 2009 to 66% in 2015 and then down to 54% in 2016, while magnetic tape shows a consistent decline over the same period.

Optical disc use between 2009 and 2016 bounced around between 7% and 17%. Film shows a general decline from 15% usage in 2009 to 2% in 2016. The trend with declining film use follows the trend toward completely digital workflows.

Note that about 60% of survey participants said that they used external storage devices to capture content from their cameras in 2016 (perhaps this is why the HDD percentages are so high). In 2016, 83% said that over 80% of their content is created in a digital format.

In 2016, 93.2% of the survey respondents said they reuse their recording media (compared to 89.9% in 2015, 93.3% in 2014, 84.5% in 2013, 86% in 2012, 79% in 2010 and 75% in 2009). In 2016, 75% of respondents said they archive their camera recording media (compared to 73.6% in 2015, 74.2% in 2014, 81.4% in 2013, 85% in 2012 and 77% in 2010).

Archiving the original recording media may be a practice in decline — especially with expensive reusable media such as flash memory cards. Digital storage on tape, hard disk drives or flash storage allows the reuse of media.

Post Production
The size of content — and amount — has put strains on post network bandwidth and storage. This includes editing and other important operations. As much of this work may take place in smaller facilities, these companies may be doing much of their work on direct attached storage devices and they may share or archive this media in the cloud in order to avoid the infrastructure costs of running a data center.

The graph below shows that for the 2016 survey participants there was a general increase in the use of shared network storage (such as SAN or NAS), and a decrease in DAS storage as the number of people working in a post facility increases. The DAS storage in the larger facilities may be different than that used in smaller facilities.

DAS vs. shared storage by number of people in a post facility.

When participants were asked about their use of direct attached and network storage in digital editing and post, the survey showed the following summary statistics in 2016 (compared to earlier surveys):

– 74.5% had DAS
– 89.8% of these had more than 1 TB of DAS
– 10 to 50 TB was the most popular DAS size (27.5%)
– 17.4% of these had more than 50 TB of DAS storage
– 2.9% had more than 500 TB of DAS storage
– 68.1% had NAS or SAN
– 57.4% had 50 TB or more of network storage in 2016
– About 15% had more than 500 TB of NAS/SAN storage in 2016
– Many survey participants had considerable storage capacities in both DAS and NAS/SAN.

We asked whether survey participants used cloud-based storage for editing and post. In 2016 23.0% of responding participants said yes. The respondents, 20.9% of them, said that they had 1TB or more of their storage capacity in the cloud.

Content Distribution
Distribution of professional video content has many channels. It can use physical media for getting content to digital cinemas or to consumers, the distribution can be done electronically using broadcast, cable or satellite transmission, or through the Internet or mobile phone networks.

The table below gives responses for the percentage of physical media used by the survey respondents for content distribution in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2010. Note that these are the average for the survey population giving their percentage for each physical media and do not and should not be expected to add to 100%. Digital tape, DVD discs, HDDs and Flash Memory are the most popular distribution formats.

Average percentage content on physical media for professional content distribution.

Following are survey observations for electronic content distribution, such as video on demand.

– The average number of hours on a central content delivery system was 2,174 hours in 2016.
– There was an average of 427 hours ingested monthly in 2016.
– In 2016, 38% of respondents had more than 5% of their content on edge servers.
– About 31% used flash memory on their edge servers in 2016.

Archiving and Preservation
Today, most new entertainment and media content is born digital, so it is natural that this content should be preserved in digital form. This requirement places new demands on format preservation for long-term digital archives as well as management and systematic format refreshes during the expected life of a digital archive.

In addition, the cost of analog content digitization and preservation in a digital format has gone down considerably, and many digitization projects are proceeding apace. The growth of digital content archiving will swell the amount of content available for repurposing and long-tail distribution. It will also swell the amount of storage and storage facilities required to store these long-term professional content archives.

Following are some observations from our 2016 survey on trends in digital archiving and content preservation.

– 41% had less than 2,000 hours of content in a long-term archive
– 56.9% archived all the content captured from their cameras
– 54.0% archived copies of content in all of their distribution formats
– 35.9% digitally archived all content captured from their dailies
– 31.3% digitally archived all content captured from rough cuts
– 36.5% digitally archived all content captured from their intermediaries
– 50.9% of the respondents said that their annual archive growth rate was less than 6% in 2016
– About 28.6% had less than 2,000 hours of unconverted analog content
– 16.7% of participants had over 5,000 hours of unconverted analog content
– About 52.5% of the survey respondents have an annual analog conversion rate of 2% or less
– The average rate of conversion is about 3.4% in 2016

Professional media and entertainment content was traditionally archived on film or analog videotapes. Today, the options available for archive media to store digital content depend upon the preferences and existing infrastructure of digital archive facilities. Figure 6 gives the percentage distribution of archive media used by the survey participants.

Percentage of digital long-term archives on various media

Some other observations from the archive and preservation section of the survey:

– About 42.6% never update their digital archives.
– About 76.2% used different storage for archiving and working storage.
– About 49.2% copied and replaced their digital long-term archives every 10 years or less.
– 38.1% said they would use a private or public cloud for archiving in 2016.

Conclusions
Larger content files, driven by higher resolution, higher frame rates, higher dynamic range and stereoscopic and virtual reality video are creating larger video files. This is driving the need for high-performance storage to work on this content and to provide fast delivery, which could drive more creative work to use solid-state storage.

At the same time, cost -effective storage and management of completed work is driving the increased use of hard disk drives, magnetic tape and even optical storage for low-cost storage.

The price of storing content in the cloud has gone down so much that there are magnetic tape-based cloud storage offerings that are less expensive than building one’s own storage data center, at least for small- and moderate-sized facilities.

This trend is expected to grow the use of cloud storage in media and entertainment, especially for archiving, as shown in the figure below.

Growth of cloud storage in media and entertainment.

—Dr. Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin & Associates, is a storage analyst and consultant with over 30 years in the data storage industry. He is the founder and organizer of the Annual Storage Visions Conference as well as the Creative Storage Conference.